Trust me when I say it's not easy to come up with a joke or gag that somebody hasn't already done somewhere.

This particular gag "got" me, as it did, I'm sure, most others, simply because we're so used to seeing "thought bubbles" in comic strips. I admit I had to double-take it a bit, as my first thought was it was a metaphor, not that she was literally moving what's presumably a decoration or small artwork.

However, even the Jungle version is not new; I recall reading an old Archie comic that very likely dated back to the late sixties (it was a reprint,as they so often do) that showed almost that precise joke: The gang did the same bit to a sign somebody had posted on a fence, that said something like "what the heck is that?"

One tends to run across some jokes that have been around so long you wonder if the guy's hard up for a gag or honestly never heard it before. Gluemeat recently did a couple that way- the blue guy saying how bad it was when he got caught in a mall during a power outage, how he was trapped on the escalator for hours!

That harkens back to my elementary school days, and I seem to recall another Archie version of that as well, with "Big Moose" playing the patsy. Did Yorke use it because he figured no one else had heard it? Did he use it because he just thought of it and assumed it was new and interesting? Or was he getting ideas from an old Bennet Cerf joke book?

In any case, don't let it worry you if someone's tried the same or a similar joke. In this bloody great huge world, there will always be someone who has seen or heard the gag before. People like Chaplin, Twain, Marx (Groucho, not Karl) Fields, Soupy Sales and others wrote or performed an astounding array of material over many, many years. I've seen gags pioneered by Victor Borge drawn as unique in comic strips- again, is it an intentional ripoff? Unintentional likeness? Did the artist hope none of his teenybopper readers had ever heard of Borge, let alone watched him conduct an orchestra?

Of course, the alternative is what? Maybe this- A friend of mine draws this strip:

This is hilarious. I was holding my sides it was so funny. But unless you're a hard-core tournament-level paintball player, or at least have some working knowledge of Sup'Air inflatable speedball bunkers, it's totally incomprehensible. It makes no sense whatsoever. *

Doc doesn't draw for everyone, he draws for his group of regulars. There's a thousand peope writing "stuff for everyone" like Rose is Rose or Buckles. Draw what you enjoy, and rather than trying to attract a bunch of 'everyday' readers, try to attract a bunch of people who enjoy- as I do- reading what you write because it's what you wrote.

*Okay, speedball uses large inflatable bunkers- barricades to hide behind during play. They come in various shapes- a large cylinder that the players tend to dub the "beer can". As in, they shout to a teammate "He's behind the left beer can!" so that team mate knows where the opposing players are.

A tall triangular form got dubbed the "dorito", and there's a half-moon form that they tend to call the "taco". There's also a "rocket", a "cone" and a "snake" among others.

At the "break", the very start of the game, the opposing teams start from boxes at opposite ends of the field. At "go", they break for the nearest or strategically-best bunker. Just as football players have particular "plays" they run, good teams have "breakout plays" where certain players break for certain barricades. As in "I'm heading for the Dorito" or "I'll take the rightside beer can" and so forth. Here is a good pic that shows a version of the "beercan", dorito and taco (back to front.)

So of course, the new kid was saying he was literally going out for a taco, rather than running for a certain barricade where he could provide cover fire for his teammates, who tend to suffer for the loss. And, at the end, he's totally clueless he's made any kind of mistake.

Still doesn't make sense, does it? Well, I felt wordy tonight, feel free to ignore me.

Makes good sense to me, but I'd agree it's not funny unless you already know about paintballing.

It's probably not surprising that this particular kind of joke is repeated, since comic strips all have a large stock of conventions to draw on; speech/thought bubbles, panel boundaries, etc. (It's arguable that comics authors should avoid them as much as possible simply because they are so easily-found.) And on a broader level, the mechanics which make can any joke funny - wordplay, absurdity, deflation, misunderstanding - are reused over and over by everyone with different specifics, and have been for hundreds of years. So the chances of creating a 'new joke' are approximately nil, unless you're willing to sacrifice a lot of time and readers and be recognised as a genius after your death. Which I'm not.

And Alex is reading the first section of The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler. That or e. e. cummings.

I believe it was Mort Walker who first itemized and named many of the comic strip conventions- sweat droplets, for example, which he dubbed "plewds". The little dust clouds from fast motion, movement lines indicating a moving object, the "smoke from the ears" depiction of anger...

Some strips use the panel borders- Gloria, for example, has based an entire extradimensional world from the "space between the borders". And one of the funniest gags I've seen was a person demonstrating a vacuum cleaner so powerful it could actually warp time and space- the art depicted the vacuum tugging on the panel border, pulling it out of shape.

Have you, in fact, played paintball? That's not at all in keeping with your studiously maintained air of bookishness.

I'm not familiar with the book or author- does it refer to Genesis or procreation?

"The second volume in Koestler's trilogy on the human mind is an study of the processes of creativity and imagination in which Koestler explains that humans are most creative when rational thought is abandoned during dreams and trances."

Hmm... Possibly. I dreamed a new variety of daffodil a few nights ago, but it gave me the creeps.

It's probably not surprising that this particular kind of joke is repeated, since comic strips all have a large stock of conventions to draw on; speech/thought bubbles, panel boundaries, etc.

Some strips use the panel borders- Gloria, for example, has based an entire extradimensional world from the "space between the borders".

S'funny, Twap's adventures in Bob's world was the first example I thought of too, when Jimrob made that comment.

I would have to agree that it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, but I think the important factor is the way in which the gag is presented. One way could make me be giggling about it for a good hour, while another might get nothing more than a short look and a smile. Comedy is all about delivery.

Let's hope that he was reading some dreadful modern mainstream literature

Like saaaaaay... Harry Potter? *pokes Gloria*

"If you take a slam, get up and land that sucker. Don't let it beat you." - Anon.

Can't let this thread go without mentioning Tailsteak's One Over Zero, a long-running cartoon-strip about life in a long-running cartoon-strip. It's funny and brainy and has some wonderful characters. Heh - "horizonite".